• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.163-172
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• 2019

Methamphetamine (MA) is currently the most abused illicit drug in Korea and its major metabolite is amphetamine (AP). As MA exist as two enantiomers with the different pharmacological properties, it is necessary to determine their respective amounts in a sample. Thus a chiral stationary phase liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric (LC-MS/MS) method was developed for identification and quantification of d-MA, l-MA, d-AP, and l-AP in human urine. Urine sample ($200{\mu}L$) was diluted with pure water and purified using solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridge. A $5-{\mu}L$ aliquot of SPE treated sample solution was injected into LC-MS/MS system. Chiral separation was carried out on the Astec Chirobiotic V2 column with an isocratic elution for each enantiomer. Identification and quantification of enantiomeric MA and AP was performed using multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) detection mode. Linear regression with a $1/x^2$ as the weighting factor was applied to generate a calibration curve. The linear ranges were 25-1000 ng/mL for all compounds. The intra- and inter-day precisions were within 3.6 %, while the intra- and inter-day accuracies ranged from -5.4 % to 11.8 %. The limits of detection were 2.5 ng/mL (d-MA), 3.5 ng/mL (l-MA), 7.5 ng/mL (d-AP), and 7.5 ng/mL (l-AP). Method validation parameters such as selectivity, matrix effect, and stability were evaluated and met acceptance criteria. The applicability of the method was tested by the analysis of genuine forensic urine samples from drug abusers. d-MA is the most common compound found in urine and mainly used by abusers.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.3694-3722
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• 2022

In today's globalized world, there is no transparency in exchanging data and information between producers and consumers. However, these tasks experience many challenges, such as administrative barriers, confidential data leakage, and extensive time delays. To overcome these challenges, we propose a decentralized, secured, and verified smart chain framework using Ethereum Smart Contract which employs Inter Planetary File Systems (IPFS) and MongoDB as storage systems to automate the process and exchange information into blocks using the Tendermint algorithm. The proposed work promotes complete traceability of the product, ensures data integrity and transparency in addition to providing security to their personal information using the Lelantos mode of shipping. The Tendermint algorithm helps to speed up the process of validating and authenticating the transaction quickly. More so in this time of pandemic, it is easier to meet the needs of customers through the Ethermint Smart Chain, which increases customer satisfaction, thus boosting their confidence. Moreover, Smart contracts help to exploit more international transaction services and provide an instant block time finality of around 5 sec using Ethermint. The paper concludes with a description of product storage and distribution adopting the Ethermint technique. The proposed system was executed based on the Ethereum-Tendermint Smart chain. Experiments were conducted on variable block sizes and the number of transactions. The experimental results indicate that the proposed system seems to perform better than existing blockchain-based systems. Two configuration files were used, the first one was to describe the storage part, including its topology. The second one was a modified file to include the test rounds that Caliper should execute, including the running time and the workload content. Our findings indicate this is a promising technology for food supply chain storage and distribution.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.139-145
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• 2024

Purpose: This study examined the influence of a metal artifact reduction (MAR) tool, sharpening filters, and their combination on the diagnosis of vertical root fracture (VRF) in teeth with metallic posts using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). Materials and Methods: Twenty single-rooted human premolars - 9 with VRF and 11 without - were individually placed in a human mandible. A metallic post composed of a cobalt-chromium alloy was inserted into the root canal of each tooth. CBCT scans were then acquired under the following parameters: 8 mA, a 5×5 cm field of view, a voxel size of 0.085 mm, 90 kVp, and with MAR either enabled or disabled. Five oral and maxillofacial radiologists independently evaluated the CBCT exams under each MAR mode and across 3 sharpening filter conditions: no filter, Sharpen 1×, and Sharpen 2×. The diagnostic performance was quantified by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity. These metrics were compared using 2-way analysis of variance with a significance level of α=5%. Intra- and inter-examiner agreement were assessed using the weighted kappa test. Results: Neither MAR nor the application of sharpening filters significantly impacted AUC or specificity (P>0.05). However, sensitivity increased when MAR was combined with Sharpen 1× and Sharpen 2× (P=0.015). The intra-examiner agreement ranged from fair to substantial (0.34-0.66), while the inter-examiner agreement ranged from fair to moderate (0.27-0.41). Conclusion: MAR in conjunction with sharpening filters improved VRF detection; therefore, their combined use is recommended in cases of suspected VRF.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.35-47
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• 2019

In this study, high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) was employed to detect 26 antidiabetic compounds in adulterated dietary supplements using a simple, selective method. The work presented herein may help prevent incidents related to food adulteration and restrict the illegal food market. The best separation was obtained on a Shiseido Capcell Pak(R) C18 MG-II ($2.0mm{\times}100mm$, $3{\mu}m$), which improved the peak shape and MS detection sensitivity of the target compounds. A gradient elution system composed of 0.1 % (v/v) formic acid in distilled water and methanol at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min for 18 min was utilized. A triple quadrupole mass spectrometer with an electrospray ionization source operated in the positive or negative mode was employed as the detector. The developed method was validated as follows: specificity was confirmed in the multiple reaction monitoring mode using the precursor and product ion pairs. For solid samples, LOD ranged from 0.16 to 20.00 ng/mL and LOQ ranged from 0.50 to 60.00 ng/mL, and for liquid samples, LOD ranged from 0.16 to 20.00 ng/mL and LOQ ranged from 0.50 to 60.00 ng/mL. Satisfactory linearity was obtained from calibration curves, with $R^2$ > 0.99. Both intra and inter-day precision were less than 13.19 %. Accuracies ranged from 80.69 to 118.81 % (intra/inter-day), with a stability of less than 14.88 %. Mean recovery was found to be 80.6-119.0 % and less than 13.4 % RSD. Using the validated method, glibenclamide and pioglitazone were simultaneously determined in one capsule at concentrations of 1.52 and 0.53 mg (per capsule), respectively.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.43 no.11 s.353
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• pp.68-77
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• 2006

In accommodating the asymmetric traffic for future wireless multimedia services, the dynamic time division duplexing (D-TDD) scheme is considered as one of the key solutions. With the D-TDD mode, however, the inter-BS and inter-MS interference is inevitable during the cross time slot (CTS) period, and this interference seriously degrades the system performance. To mitigate such interference, we propose a region and time partitioning D-TDD architecture for OFDM systems. Each time slot in the CTS period is split into several minislots, and then each cell is divided into as many regions as the number of minislots per time slot. We then assign the minislots only to the users in its predefined corresponding region. On top of such architecture which inherently separates the interfering entities farther from each other, we design a robust time slot allocation scheme so that the inter-cell interference can be minimized. By the computer simulation, it has been verified that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional time slot allocation methods in both the outage probability and the bandwidth efficiency.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.44 no.11
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• pp.127-136
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• 2007

An abrupt scene-change frame is one that is hardly correlated with the previous frames. In that case, because an intra-coded frame has less distortion than an inter-coded one, almost all macroblocks are encoded in intra mode. This breaks up the rate control flow and increases the number of bits used. Since the reference software for H.264 takes no special action for a scene-change frame, several studies have been conducted to solve the problem using the quadratic R-D model. However, since this model is more suitable for inter frames, the existing schemes are unsuitable for computing the QP of the scene-change intra frame. In this paper, an improved rate control scheme accounting for the characteristics of intra coding is proposed for scene-change frames. The proposed scheme was validated using 16 test sequences. The results showed that the proposed scheme performed better than the existing H.264 rate control schemes. The PSNR was improved by an average of 0.4-0.6 dB and a maximum of 1.1-1.6 dB. The PSNR fluctuation was also in proved by an average of 18.6 %.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.340-347
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• 2015

HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) achieves high coding efficiency by employing a quadtree-based coding unit (CU) block partitioning structure and various prediction units (PUs), and the determination of the best CU partition structure and the best PU mode based on rate-distortion (R-D) cost. However, the computation complexity of encoding also dramatically increases. In this paper, to reduce such encoding computational complexity, we propose three fast PU mode decision methods based on encoding information of upper depth as follows. In the first method, the search of PU mode of the current CU is early terminated based on the sub-CBF (Coded Block Flag) of upper depth. In the second method, the search of intra prediction modes of PU in the current CU is skipped based on the sub-Intra R-D cost of upper depth. In the last method, the search of intra prediction modes of PU in the lower depth's CUs is skipped based on the sub-CBF of the current depth's CU. Experimental results show that the three proposed methods reduce the computational complexity of HM 14.0 to 31.4%, 2.5%, and 23.4% with BD-rate increase of 1.2%, 0.11%, and 0.9%, respectively. The three methods can be applied in a combined way to be applied to both of inter prediction and intra prediction, which results in the complexity reduction of 34.2% with 1.9% BD-rate increase.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.551-560
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• 2009

This paper proposes a method for efficient lossless depth map coding for MPEG 3D-Video coding. In general, the conventional video coding method such as H.264 has been used for depth map coding. However, the conventional video coding methods do not consider the image characteristics of the depth map. Therefore, as a lossless depth map coding method, this paper proposes a bit-plane based lossless depth mar coding method by using the MPEG-4 Part 2 shape coding scheme. Simulation results show that the proposed method achieves the compression ratios of 28.91:1. In intra-only coding, proposed method reduces the bitrate by 24.84% in comparison with the JPEG-LS scheme, by 39.35% in comparison with the JPEG-2000 scheme, by 30.30% in comparison with the H.264(CAVLC mode) scheme, and by 16.65% in comparison with the H.264(CABAC mode) scheme. In addition, in intra and inter coding the proposed method reduces the bitrate by 36.22% in comparison with the H.264(CAVLC mode) scheme, and by 23.71% in comparison with the 0.264(CABAC mode) scheme.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.103-114
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• 2005

The transit fare resulted from the renovation of public transit system in Seoul is basically determined based on the distance-based fare policy (DFP). In DFP, the total fare a passenger has to pay for is calculated by the basic-transfer-premium fare decision rule. The fixed amount of the basic fare is first imposed when a passenger get on a mode and it lasts within the basic travel distance. The transfer fare is additionally imposed when a passenger switches from one mode to another and the fare of the latter mode is higher than the former. The premium fare is also another and the fare of the latter begins to exceed the basic travel distance and increases at the proportion of the premium fare distance. The purpose of this study is to propose an algorithm for finding K number of paths, paths that are sequentially sorted based on total amount of transit fare, under DFP of the idstance-based fare policy. For this purpose, the link mode expansion technique is proposed in order to save notations associated with the travel modes. Thus the existing K shortest path algorithms adaptable for uni-modal network analysis are applicable to the analysis for inter-modal transportation networks. An optimality condition for finding the K shortest fare routes is derived and a corresponding algorithms is developed. The case studies demonstrate that the proposed algorithm may play an important role to provide diverse public transit information considering fare, travel distance, travel time, and number of transfer.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.101-108
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• 2004

The new transit fare in the Seoul Metropolitan is basically determined based on the distance-based fare system (DBFS). The total fare in DBFS consists of three parts- (1) basic fare, (2) transfer fare, and (3) extra fare. The fixed amount of basic fare for each mode is charged when a passenger gets on a mode, and it proceeds until traveling within basic travel distance. The transfer fare may be added when a passenger switches from the present mode to another. The extra fare is imposed if the total travel distance exceeds the basic travel distance, and after that, the longer distance the more extra fare based on the extra-fare-charging rule. This study proposes an algorithm for finding minimum fare route in DBFS. This study first exploits the link-label-based searching method to enable shortest path algorithms to implement without network expansion at junction nodes in inter-modal transit networks. Moreover, the link-expansion technique is adopted in order for each mode's travel to be treated like duplicated links, which have the same start and end nodes, but different link features. In this study, therefore, some notations associated with modes can be saved, thus the existing link-based shortest path algorithm is applicable without any loss of generality. For fare calculation as next steps, a mathematical formula is proposed to embrace fare-charging process using search process of two adjacent links illustrated from the origin. A shortest path algorithm for finding a minimum fare route is derived by converting the formula as a recursive form. The implementation process of the algorithm is evaluated through a simple network test.